


Facade

by draculard



Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Abuse, David (Camp Camp) Needs a Hug, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Max and Gwen to the rescue, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-01-15 21:11:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18507169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: David doesn't like lying to people. But he doesn't like hurting people, either - and what he knows about Mr. Campbell will cause nothing but hurt.





	1. Chapter 1

Gwen woke to the sound of the cabin door closing and quiet footsteps on David’s side of the partition. A moment later, there was a click and she could see soft light coming from under the crack at the bottom of the door. Gwen pressed her face into her pillow to muffle a groan, then reached out blindly for the cheap LED alarm clock David had given her on her first day. Electricity was spotty at Camp Campbell, and phones couldn’t always be trusted to charge overnight, so they had to rely on battery-operated devices for … well, for pretty much anything modern.

Gwen dragged the alarm clock close to her face, gripping it with both hands, and squinted at the glowing blue numbers. God. What the fuck was David doing up this early? She slammed the alarm clock back onto her bedside table with a loud _clunk_ and propped herself up on her elbows, eyes screwing shut.

“ _David_ ,” she called. There was no answer, but after a moment the light in David’s room brightened, and then he knocked on the petition. With a sigh, Gwen slumped back against her pillow. She hadn’t meant to invite him _in_ , she just wanted to know what the fuck he was doing.

“Gwen?” David said. Gwen sighed again, dragging her hands over her face.

“Come in,” she said. _I guess_.

David threw the door open and bounced inside with his typical manic energy. Backlit by his desk lamp in the other room, he looked strangely pale. Gwen narrowed her eyes and sat up.

“Why are you awake?” she asked. David gave her a bright grin.

“I was just making sure all the bows were strung for Archery Camp tomorrow!” he said. Gwen craned her neck and glared at her alarm clock.

“At three a.m.?”

“No time like the present,” David said. Gwen scoffed and for a moment David’s grin faded, turning shaky around the edges. He broke eye contact to fiddle with his bandana. “Gosh, I sure am sorry for waking you,” he said.

Gwen let out a long breath. “Are you staying up?” she asked. David’s smile dropped entirely.

“Yes.”

Well, that wasn’t healthy. He needed to sleep as much as Gwen did — and maybe if they were having this conversation at, say, nine p.m., she’d feel obligated to argue with him, find out what he was doing, get him to go to sleep.

But in the end, that wasn’t really Gwen’s job.

And she was tired as all hell.

“Turn the fucking light off, then,” she grumbled. She laid down and pulled the blankets over her head.

“Sure thing, Gwen!” David chirped. She could almost see him cheerfully swinging his fist. “Sleep well!”

Gwen didn’t respond. She heard the door close and David’s desk lamp click off. A moment later, the desk chair creaked as he sat down in it and Gwen heard what might have been a nearly-inaudible sigh.

Before she had time to think much on it, she was asleep.

* * *

The shower woke her up again at five-thirty. Gwen swung her legs over the side of the bed reluctantly and just sat there for a moment, her eyes feeling puffy and dry. She scrubbed her hands over her face, heaved a huge sigh, and crossed to David’s side of the room, where the TV (and, most importantly, the coffee pot) were.

Gwen turned on the morning news for background noise. Her eyes roamed over the room while the coffee pot warmed up. Like always, David’s bed was carefully made, the sheets folded into hospital corners. Last night’s clothes were neatly folded and carefully placed in the hamper, waiting to be washed.

The shower turned off just as the coffee pot gurgled itself to completion. Gwen put her mug under the spout. Behind her, the bathroom door opened and closed and she glanced over her shoulder to see David pause in the doorway, a towel wrapped around his waist.

“Gwen!” he said, not smiling. Gwen frowned at him.

“What?”

He didn’t respond, just stared at her like he couldn’t believe she was in the room — like she always was, every single morning, making coffee while he took the first shower. Gwen scowled at him until he got a hold of himself and put on a shaky smile and made his way to his dresser.

As he passed her, Gwen’s eyes zeroed in on the tiny bruises dotting his torso. They were minuscule — no bigger than her thumb — and faint, but they looked fresh. They dotted his chest, his shoulders, his arms. She ran back through her memory of the day before, trying to figure out when he could’ve acquired bruises like that, but couldn’t think of anything.

“You get in a fight last night, restringing the bows?” she asked. David grabbed a fresh green pullover out of his dresser and put it on. It didn’t escape Gwen’s notice that he took longer than usual to meet her eyes, adjusting his shirt like it was of the utmost importance.

“I, er, may have run into a bit of trouble with the bows, yes,” David said, giving her a rueful smile. He crossed his feet and mimed bending back a bow to string it.

Gwen didn’t buy it. David never had issues with stereotypical camp things, and she’d personally seen him string the bows a dozen times before. Still, if David didn’t want to fess up, it was probably something embarrassing, and she’d really rather take a shower than listen to How David Got His Groove Back.

And anyway, he was awkwardly fiddling with the towel wrapped around his waist, too polite to ask her to leave so he could finish changing. He glanced at Gwen out of the corner of his eyes, blushing a little, and opened his mouth to say something. But nothing came out.

Gwen walked past him into the bathroom. As she undressed for her shower, her eyes caught on a piece of wadded tissue in the wastebasket. There was a small, bright spot of red on it — blood, fresh enough that it hadn’t turned brown yet.

She looked back at the closed door, imagining David on the other side of it, her face set in a frown.

* * *

“Aw, heck.”

It was so soft Gwen almost didn’t hear it, especially over the chaos of all the campers eating lunch. She looked around and saw David looking out the window, his arms crossed over his chest. He bit his lip, then saw Gwen looking at him and gave her a nervous smile and a little wave.

Uh-uh. Not gonna cut it.

Carefully, Gwen made her way through a swamp of pre-teen campers. Space Kid nearly broke her ankle as he sailed by at top-speed on Ered’s skateboard. When she finally reached David, he had turned away from the window completely, hands clasped behind his back, and was surveying the room with a cheerful grin.

Gwen leaned past him and looked outside. On the edge of the campgrounds, she could see Quartermaster talking to Cameron Campbell.

“Christ,” Gwen muttered, letting her forehead fall against her arm. “When did _he_ get here?”

“Now, Gwen—”

“Don’t even start,” said Gwen, without much venom. David rubbed the back of his neck and glanced out the window again.

“Mr. Campbell’s just doing a little quality control,” he said. Gwen narrowed her eyes at him.

“You’ve already talked to him? When?”

David winced and turned abruptly away, his eyes searching the room wildly. His gaze caught on a food fight and he called, “Nikki! Dolph! Food goes in our _mouths_ , not our hands — sorry, Gwen, I’ve got to—”

He tried to bolt away, but Gwen grabbed his arm before he could.

“Was that why you were up late last night?” she asked. “He pulled you into some kind of scam?”

“Gwen!” David said, scandalized. “Mr. Campbell—”

“Don’t even start,” said Gwen. She pulled him insistently away from the children — well, it was impossible to really get away from the children, but she at least pulled him further from the rows of dining tables. She lowered her voice, keeping a tight grip on David’s wrist. “Were you bleeding last night?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

David blinked. She watched his throat bob up and down as he swallowed.

“There was a bloody tissue in the trash can,” she said. “Like, fresh blood. And don’t think I missed the fucking bruises all over your chest—”

Wincing suddenly, David tried to pull away. Gwen refused to let go of him, and to her astonishment, he retaliated by turning in her grasp to face the kids. “Well, campers!” he said loudly, his voice overriding Gwen’s easily, “who’s ready to start the day?”

The kids greeted him with hearty boos. Gwen tried to continue, but David was talking again, gesturing cheerfully as though she weren’t holding onto him with a death grip.

“Today’s Archery Camp, so let’s all limber up with a jog to the shooting range!” He started to take off; Gwen planted her feet and tugged on his arm, keeping him more or less in place. Still, he didn’t even look at her. “First one there gets extra dessert!” David said.

Immediately, the boos turned to rabid war cries as the children (correction: the monsters) trampled over both their counselors in a race to the archery field. Max was the last one out, hands shoved deep in his pockets and a scowl on his face.

When he was gone, Gwen turned the full force of her incredulity on David.

“David,” she said, and she could hear how stunned she was in her voice, “what—”

“Can’t be late, Gwen,” said David with his usual false cheerfulness. He wrestled himself free of her grip at last, not meeting her eyes. “Why don’t you stay here and help Quartermaster set up a watercolor workshop for the afternoon block? I’ll handle archery myself.”

“I—” Gwen stammered. “I don’t—”

He leaned toward her, flashing a toothy smile as he squeezed her upper arm. “Thanks, Gwen,” he said. “You’re the best.”

In the next moment, he was gone. Gwen surveyed the mess of the dining hall, abandoned plates and chunks of food everywhere. Numbly, she crossed to the window and watched as David jogged over to the archery field; was she imagining it, or did he stiffen a little as he passed Quartermaster and Campbell? Certainly, she wasn’t imagining the fact that David refused to acknowledge them; he didn’t even turn his head to smile as they passed.

 _Peculiar_ , she thought. And with everything piling up — the late night, the bruises and blood, David’s unusual behavior — she could feel the all-too-familiar pounding of anxiety in her brain.

Something was off, here. She just couldn’t figure out what.

* * *

It was a sensation David knew well — the uncomfortable stretch of a fake smile on his face, the way his eyes burned from maintaining the slight squint that made his happiness look genuine. The stiffness of his shoulders, the aching of his legs and hips and back, the feeling that someone was watching him from behind even as he demonstrated for the kids how to shoot a bow.

Mr. Campbell was staring at him. He knew it without looking; he was too well-acquainted with the feeling of Mr. Campbell’s eyes boring into his back.

David took a deep breath and pretended he’d heard whatever Nikki had just asked. “Superb question, Nikki!” he said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. “Does anyone know the answer?”

The children stared at him blankly.

“Dude,” said Max, “she just asked if we could start.”

David blinked and did his best not to swallow his smile. “And the answer is…?”

Max gave David his usual, unrelenting you’re-an-idiot stare. He snatched a bow from Camp Campbell’s signature archery bin (a large plastic trash can filled with bows and arrows) and tossed it to Nikki with a grumbled, “Here. Not like this moron is gonna do shit.”

David abdicated his throne with a sense of heavy relief, gladly passing leadership onto the children. He assumed a supervisory role on the sidelines; he could hear himself cheering on Nurf’s aim even while his senses stretched behind him, waiting for any sign that Mr. Campbell was coming nearer.

After five minutes with no life-threatening injuries, Max sidled over to the edge of the field to stand next to David. David noted the boy’s arrival with a mixture of dread and affection.

“What the hell is up with you today?” Max asked today, his voice accusatory as usual. David pasted a wide grin on his face and opened his mouth to respond.

To his horror, he found he couldn’t think of a single thing to say. He stood there with his mouth hanging open for a moment, the grin slowly fading.

“Uh,” David said. His eyes darted down to Max, who was glaring up at him with his eyebrows knotted. “Well,” David said, and then trailed off again.

“Jesus Christ,” said Max. The disgust in his voice was clear, and it inexplicably sent a shard of glass straight through David’s heart. He turned his concentration on the archery field instead, to keep himself from deflating.

“Nice work, Nikki!” David called. “Neil, try to keep a consistent anchor point — no, don’t throw the arrows —”

He was waving his left hand in the air in some vague, cautionary gesture when suddenly Max jumped up and grabbed it, pulling David sharply toward the ground.

“What the fuck is this?” Max asked, examining David’s arm with a scowl. “What are you, emo?”

“What?” said David, genuinely confused. His eyes darted back and forth over his skin until he finally caught the three shallow scratches on his forearm, just above the elbow. They were so light he didn’t even notice them.

Not compared to everything else.

Gently, David extricated his arm from Max and put both his hands on Max’s shoulders, trying hard not remember the way Mr. Campbell's nails raked over his skin. “I ran into a rosebush,” he said, making his voice as soft and nonthreatening as possible. He wasn’t sure why he did this — it was just instinct — and as usual, his instincts were wrong. Max’s expression darkened at David’s soothing tone, and he batted the counselor’s hands away.

“Fuck off,” he said. “Rosebush, my ass. Never seen a fucking rosebush anywhere around here.”

David straightened to his feet with a sigh. He didn’t have the chance to inform Max that there were, in fact, several rosebushes on Camp Campbell grounds (they just weren’t in bloom) before the boy marched back over to join his friends. Max grabbed a bow from the archery bin, notched an arrow in it, and shot it straight into the dirt by accident. A genuine smile — small and full of fondness — wound its way over David’s lips.

It disappeared a second later.

“Davey,” said a deep, familiar voice behind. A broad, warm hand landed on David’s shoulder, squeezing tight enough to hurt.

“Mr. Campbell!” said David, not turning around. He heard the forced cheerfulness in his voice and hated himself for it.

“Will I be seeing you again tonight?” asked Mr. Campbell. His lips were dangerously close to David’s ear, his breath hot and sour.

And what could David say? What excuse could he make? He’d been saying _yes_ to Mr. Campbell, like it or not, since he was ten years old.

* * *

That night, David perched on the edge of his bed, not yet changed into his pajamas. He could hear Gwen watching a video in her room — something loud, with a great deal of screeching, dramatic voices — but the sound came to him muted, like his head was underwater. He found himself unable to look away from his boots; his eyes were glazed and he couldn’t seem to focus them.

When a hand fell on his shoulder, he nearly jumped out of his skin.

“David,” Gwen said. He looked up, caught the concern in her eyes, and looked away again. “Seriously,” Gwen said, “we need to talk.”

She sat next to him on the bed, a move that made David feel unexplainably jittery. He hopped to his feet the instant he felt her weight on the mattress next to him and paced the room instead, aware of her eyes on him but refusing to acknowledge them.

“I’ve been planning next week’s activities,” David said, only because it was the first distraction to pop into his mind. Simultaneously, a small voice in his head was preparing for tonight’s events. “Skateboarding for Monday afternoon, obviously,” he said. “Because it’s Ered’s day. But for the morning activity —”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Gwen said, her voice hard, “and you know it.”

 _It’ll be cold tonight,_ said the voice in David’s head. Best bring a sweater.

He acknowledged the voice with a single nod and Gwen, thinking it was meant for her, went on.

“There’s something going on with you and Campbell,” she said. “Don’t even try to lie to me about it, okay?”

David crossed to his closet, examining the small array of non-camp-related clothes inside. His civilian clothes. He rifled through them until he found his only hoodie — thin, green, and emblazoned with a faded Smokey the Bear logo — and pulled it on. When he turned around, he found Gwen watching him, looking simultaneously amused and nauseated.

“Every single fucking thing in your closet is forest-green,” she observed. David absorbed this accusation with an owlish blink.

“Yes,” he said. He shut the closet door.

“And you’re totally fine with that?” Gwen asked.

 _For someone claiming she can’t be distracted from the issue at hand,_ the voice in David’s head noted, _Gwen sure is allowing herself to be distracted_.

“Well, it’s my favorite color,” David said, mustering up just enough cheerfulness for a smile. “What were you watching earlier? I could hear it through the door.”

It wasn’t exactly a suave transition, and it completely failed to distract Gwen further. Instead, she seemed to realize David was trying to lead her astray, and her eyes narrowed at him.

“David, you know you can tell me anything, right?” she said. “Like, it won’t upset my delicate sensibilities or anything if Campbell’s got you into — I don’t know, a fight club, or an international mob ring or something.”

Chuckling, David took a seat on the edge of his desk, facing the window and the darkness outside. “Oh, Gwen,” he said fondly, “I can’t imagine myself…”

Hurting anybody. That was all he wanted to say. But suddenly his mind was flooded with images he refused to remember; Jasper, naked and shivering in the basement of Campbell’s summer home, and Davey lying on his stomach in the dirt outside, watching through the water-stained window. Doing nothing.

He chewed the inside of his cheek furiously, aware that he was now glaring at the wall and unable to stop himself. When he finally tore his gaze away, he found Gwen staring at him with open worry.

It was a long time before either of them spoke.

“Why the hoodie?” Gwen asked finally. “You don’t normally wear that to bed, do you?”

David didn’t respond.

“Are you going to meet him?” Gwen asked. “Campbell?” She dug her phone out of her pocket and glanced at the screen, clearly expecting no answer. “It’s chilly out,” she said, stowing the phone away again. “I guess I can’t blame you for dressing warm if you’re meeting him in the woods for … whatever the hell is going on.”

Looking down, David saw that the faded, green drawstrings of his hoodie were uneven, with one hanging down to his navel and the other scrunched up, hidden almost entirely inside the hood. He pulled at them absently, choosing to focus on straightening them out rather than look at Gwen.

“What _are_ you doing with him?” Gwen said, and now David could tell that she was thinking aloud, not expecting him to answer at all. “Are you … David, is he …?”

He glanced over at her, caught the look of budding fear in her eyes. He didn’t want to stick around and watch that fester.

“I’m gonna go check on the campers,” he said, jumping to his feet again. He flashed Gwen a quick smile as he headed for the door, glad to hear a note of genuine-sounding lightness in his voice. Gwen watched him go with wide, solemn eyes. “Make sure none of those little goofballs are trying to sneak off,” David said.

That last part was unnecessary, he realized almost immediately; it made him sound unnatural, like he was babbling nervously in an effort to get away. But even though Gwen _must_ have noticed this herself, she made no move to stop him.

She only watched him go.

* * *

He did check on the campers, of course, and found most of them sleeping and a few of them whispering to each other, talking over the events of the day, their plans for tomorrow’s mischief. David could remember doing that when he was a camper, too — turning in his sleeping bag to lay on his side, propping his head up on his hand and struggling to make out Jasper’s face in the night.

When he was a kid, they’d swapped ghost stories about the counselors. David had started it, saying Darla was actually a former camper who’d been drowned in the lake and never left, waiting for the right moment each summer to choose another child to join her in the afterlife. Jasper had one-upped him, saying Gregg was the vengeful spirit of a bullied boy who’d been chopped up by other campers and dumped in the outhouse. Gregg, or so the story went, was constantly on the lookout, ready to slaughter any child who so resembled his bullies.

 _And you know who his worst bully was?_ Jasper had said. _This kid named Red Mudgett. Guess why they called him Red._

Davey had squirmed in his sleeping bag; he tried to be scornful, but his voice just came out squeaky and afraid. _I guess you’re gonna tell me why._

 _Cuz he had red hair,_ Jasper said, of course. _Just like you._

Davey had scoffed, and Jasper, laughing at him, had said, _So you better watch out on your way to the outhouse. You never know who’s gonna get ya._

Even now, as an adult — with the outhouse torn down years ago and filled in with dirt, replaced with a stone shower room — David felt creeped out when he remembered it. Of course, according to camp tradition, counselors never needed to worry about ghosts. They _were_ the ghosts. That was how the stories always went.

So he crept through the forest silently, trying to tamp down on the shivers crawling over his skin, under the hoodie. He focused on any distraction he could find as he walked. There were deadnettles carpeting the ground, poking dull, purple heads out of the brush. He tried to count them, and then he allowed himself to be distracted by deer tracks — two thick, deep lines sticking out in the mud from last night’s rain. When this failed, too, he turned his gaze to the sky, connecting all the constellations, struggling to remember the myths behind each one.

He came to their meeting place in no time — the old woodshed on the edge of the forest, out of use for years, ever since David himself was a camper. For a moment, the woods seemed silent and still, and David could allow himself to believe that this was it — that he was alone. That Campbell wasn’t coming.

The door to the woodshed creaked open. From inside came Mr. Campbell’s voice, deep and commanding.

“You’re late, Davey,” he said.


	2. Chapter 2

Exploring the woods of Camp Campbell with a backpack weighing down his shoulders, sunscreen smeared liberally across his face, and David’s annoying-ass voice chirping in his ear, pointing out ugly polypores and uglier butterfly-attracting weeds and barely-visible animal tracks?

Literal hell.

Exploring the woods of Camp Campbell at night, on his own, with absolutely no informative lectures on woodland plants and the ever-present knowledge that he’s breaking the rules and sticking it to the man?

Utter bliss.

Max took special pride in stomping over the morels David had pointed out earlier in the day, crushing them beneath his sneakers and examining the squishy remains. He kept his hands in his hoodie pocket as he walked with a particular maliciousness, remembering how David had cautioned them all to _please keep their hands free_ , so they could catch themselves in case they tripped and fell.

He looked up at the night sky as he walked, taking a smug satisfaction in the knowledge that he had absolutely no goddamn idea what constellations he was looking at, no matter how many times David tried to pound that information into his head.

This smug satisfaction drained away instantly when he saw the building in the distance. It rose up from the darkness like a gravestone, an aging wooden structure, covered in moss and wasp nests. Max froze, his heart thudding in his chest for reasons he couldn’t quite explain. Unbidden, one of Neil’s stupid fucking ghost stories from last night snuck into his mind and grabbed hold of his brain.

Max shuffled his feet where he stood, trying to convince himself to do something — to walk away, or to get over _whatever this feeling was_ and keep going, maybe even explore the little wooden building. He looked over his shoulder, hesitating, and then quickly looked back at the building.

In the moonlight, he could just make out what it was — an old shed, probably disused for years now. So it couldn’t possibly be the outhouse from Neil’s story, which was reassuring. It was still kinda creepy, though.

Hesitating, Max stepped forward. Nothing happened; no ghosts burst from the shed’s old, broken windows to rush right through him. No axe murderers lurked in the dark.

Satisfied in his safety — and no longer covered in goosebumps — Max bounced over the forest floor to the shed and flung the door open, mentally prepared for what lay within. Rusty old gardening tools, he imagined, and maybe some abandoned volleyball nets or something.

That wasn’t what he saw.

Max absorbed everything in a series of flashing sound and sights — bare skin and spots of blood; red, raised scratches; shallow gasps for air, muffled cries; a pair of familiar eyes squeezed shut, then flying open to stare right at Max, standing frozen once again in the doorway.

“Max!” David said. It wasn’t a scream — it was barely a whisper, really, but it made Max flinch, and it made the huge man who was holding David down look over his shoulder. It took Max a moment to identify him; for just a second, he seemed completely unfamiliar, like a stranger. Then his features solidified and in an instant, Max understood everything.

He slammed the door shut, finally remembering how to breathe, and walked away.

* * *

“Max!”

Max was halfway back to camp when he heard David running behind him, trying to catch up. He slowed down for a second, by instinct, then scowled and sped up again, keeping his hands shoved firmly into his pockets. He heard David’s sneakers pounding over the dirt path, snapping twigs and rustling through untrimmed plants.

“Max,” said David again. His hand landed on Max’s shoulder; Max shrugged it off. “Hey,” said David, and his voice was irritatingly soft and gentle. “Are you okay?”

He’d fully intended to give David the silent treatment — to never mention what he saw again — but that question was so absurd that Max scoffed and wheeled around to glare at David before he knew what he was doing.

“Am _I_ okay?” he said. “Are you fucking serious?”

David grimaced, and now that Max was facing him, he couldn’t help but take in all sorts of details he hadn’t wanted to see. The hasty, uneven knot on David’s bandana; the red, swollen area under his eye; the hazy, glazed look in his eyes. He wouldn’t even make eye contact with Max, not exactly — he was staring at Max’s hairline, and his gaze kept drifting away, as though he couldn’t anchor it to one spot.

“What the fuck, man,” Max said, suddenly exhausted. He wished he’d stayed in bed. He blurted out his thoughts without stopping to consider them, and found himself incapable even of embarrassment. “I-I thought you were a ghost at first,” he said. “You know, the ghost in the outhouse?”

David stared at him, eyes hollow and uncomprehending.

“It’s a story Neil made up,” Max said. He couldn’t figure out why he was telling David this, but he couldn’t think of anything else he’d rather say. “It’s like — you know, when you were a kid, Campbell killed you and chopped your body up and hid it in the outhouse. And now you’re a ghost and you haunt the camp. It’s just a stupid story.”

David blinked, then looked away, muttering to himself, “What is it with the outhouse?” Before Max could ask what he meant, he shook his head and turned back, this time managing to fix his gaze a little closer to Max’s eyes. His hands went to Max’s shoulders again, and Max couldn’t tell if this was meant to reassure him or keep him from running away.

“You didn’t see anything, did you?” David asked, his voice uncharacteristically low.

“Is that a serious fucking question?” Max said. David stared at him gravely, like he was trying to read Max’s face, and then let go of him with a sigh. “No, for real,” Max said when David turned away, “is that a serious fucking question? You really think I opened the door to that shed and somehow managed _not_ to see you and Campbell fucking in the middle of the goddamn floor?”

“Language, Max,” David admonished absently. That was all Max’s brain needed to tip his emotional scales in favor of hysteria.

“Is that why you’re so far up his ass all the time?” Max said, his voice coming out louder than he meant it to, and more accusatory. “You got fucking Stockholm Syndrome cuz some porn-stache weirdo’s been diddling you since— how long has this been going on, anyway?”

David said nothing. His face was like a mask, eyes far away and mouth set in a frown.

“Since you were a kid?” Max asked. “Like, my age?”

A long moment passed with nothing but the sound of a light wind whistling through the trees. David crossed his arms over his stomach — crossed them tight, like he was hugging himself.

“You should be in bed,” he said, staring up at the sky.

Max opened his mouth to argue, but for once, he couldn’t think of anything to say.

* * *

“Go to bed, Max.”

They stood in front of Max’s tent, Neil and Nikki slumbering (or at least pretending to) inside. Max crossed his arms, glowering up at David.

“I wanna talk to Gwen,” he said. He didn’t bother to lower his voice, and saw David wincing at his volume.

“You can speak to her in the morning,” David said. His eyes darted back toward the woods, then over to the counselors’ cabin. Max huffed impatiently, sensing that David would stand here all night to make sure Max went back to bed; opting out of all that bullshit, Max hurried past David, toward the cabin.

“Max!” David hissed, his voice little more than a whisper. Max ignored him, praying the cabin was unlocked. When he laid his palms against the old, thick wooden door, he felt it give a little and grinned, pushing his way inside.

“Gwen!” Max said — his voice was probably loud enough to wake the nearest campers. The cabin was so dark he could barely make out anything inside; as his eyes adjusted, he saw the shape of a desk, and something lumpy under the covers on the bed. A hand snaked out from the blankets, fumbling with a phone. After a moment, a piercing bright light shone right into Max’s eyes.

“Max?” Gwen said in a growl. “What the fuck —” She sat up in bed, the blankets falling away to reveal a rat’s nest of hair and glazed eyes. “Where’s David?”

Before Max could answer, he felt David step up behind him, hovering over him in the doorway.

“Max couldn’t sleep,” said David, his tone nauseatingly normal and chipper. “He and I were having some hot cocoa and we thought we’d—”

“I caught David and Campbell fucking in a shed,” said Max. He scowled at Gwen; he felt like if he didn’t glare at her, his face would start working. And as he glared at her, the confusion on her face melted away, replaced by a pensive expression he’d never seen before.

Silently, she flipped the blankets off of her and stood, padding across the floor. She reached over Max’s head to grab David’s arm, pulling him into the cabin; when Max looked up, he saw David wearing the same strange, haunted look on his face.

“Go to bed, Max,” Gwen said.

“But—” His voice cracked and he scowled again, whirling away from both of them. He leveled a fierce kick at the doorframe, striking it so hard that his toes almost immediately went numb.

He didn’t argue. He stomped away, angry and shaking, eyes burning with furious tears. When he reached the tent, Nikki and Neil were still asleep, and Max curled up in his sleeping bag, eyes open, glaring into the darkness.

Still shivering.

* * *

“It’s nothing, really,” David said, lips numb, voice emotionless. He stared out the open window, at the sky that was slowly lightening from black to a bluish-grey, at the honeybees and cabbage butterflies sleepily raiding the wildflowers that grew against the cabin wall. Gwen stood beside him, her fingertips brushing against David’s jaw as she tilted his head this way and that, getting a better look at the bruises forming on his delicate skin.

Eventually, she let her hand fall back to her side and retreated, standing lost in the middle of the room.

 _Do something,_ she told herself. _It doesn’t have to be something awesome. Just do something other than stand here like an idiot._

She looked at David, leaning forward with his arms folded on the windowsill. She could only see the back of his head — the curls of untidy red hair swept back from his forehead by a gentle breeze, the messy knot of his bandana, the streaks of dust and dirt on his shirt. His shoulders were relaxed, his posture loose and weary.

He’d been exhausted all week, she realized. Maybe he’d been exhausted the entire time she knew him. She sat back on the bed heavily, crushing the air out of an unfolded tangle of blankets and sheets. David’s bed, she noticed, was still impeccably made.

“How long—” Gwen started, and then stopped herself. She felt her face growing hot — frustration, embarrassment, maybe both. She remembered how her classmates had applied for internships to practice as counselors before certification, how she’d withdrawn her one and only application after she’d seen the competition, and felt a surge of regret like never before.

She had no clue what to say to David.

“I—” she started, and then stopped, wiping her sweaty palms against her thighs. “I’m here,” she said, “if you — if you want to talk. About it. About Campbell, I mean.”

To her own ears, her voice sounded awkward and inauthentic — but she _meant_ it, and she didn’t know how to make herself sound genuine. She’d never really mastered the therapy voice; all her classroom attempts at warmth and sympathy just sounded stilted, false.

But David turned his head, flashing her a weary little smile. “Max saw,” he said, and turned away again. She watched him stick his hand out the window, letting a tired honeybee land on his outstretched finger. It stayed there a long time, exploring David’s hand in small, twitchy steps. “I guess I’ll be fired,” David said.

She couldn’t see his face, but she could hear the slight wobble in his voice, and it made her cheeks burn. She wished David would turn around, would talk to her — she could barely understand what was going on. Taking a deep breath, she ran over the events in her head.

Max had caught David and Mr. Campbell having sex somewhere on camp grounds. At the very least, this meant David was gay — or bi, Gwen mentally amended, though she doubted any angry parents would care about that distinction — and that Max, the camper who most wanted to hurt David, knew. Would he tell the other campers? Would any of them care? Would they tell their parents?

Was it an abusive relationship, or — as unlikely as it seemed, knowing David — was the violence just a consensual game? Undeniably, he was getting hurt; she’d seen the bruises, the blood in the bathroom, the shallow scratches on his arms and legs. She glanced at David again. He turned his hand over as the bee crawled onto his palm, his face placid, his eyes tired.

“When was the last time you slept?” asked Gwen. This, at least, was a question she could vocalize without sounding like some sort of robot. David leaned forward, ducking down to deposit the honeybee on a dandelion. When he leaned back in, he rubbed his left eye, and Gwen noticed the swelling there had started to darken into a bruise.

“Uh, it’s been a while,” David said, his voice flat, unusually low and subdued. “A few days.”

He looked at her — finally — with a wary, pleading expression that made her heart sink.

“Max _saw_ us,” he repeated, mouth twisting. Gwen opened her mouth, but couldn’t think of anything worth saying; everything she came up with sounded stupid, sounded pointless. Slowly, David crossed to the desk and sat down on it, looking back out the window at the night sky. Behind him was an old corkboard filled with photos Gwen had never looked at too closely — old campers, old counselors. People she never knew.

For the first time, looking over David’s shoulder, she saw a picture of a little boy with red hair who must have been him, scowling at the camera. Scowling like Max had been when he stormed into the cabin to tell Gwen what was going on.

What had David seen, at that age, to make him scowl like that? Gwen’s first question returned to her, needling at her brain, but she refused to ask. It circled around in her head like a buzzard hovering over its kill.

_How long has this been going on?_


End file.
